That thing that goes on
by TheSoulWritesWords
Summary: The life of Amy and Rory. Life without the Doctor-Real life. Life in Manhatten. Oneshot. Please review!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer; I don't own Doctor Who. Some italics you may recognise are qoutes from the show and property of the BBC. The extract from the book 'Summer Falls' that we saw a teasing glimpse of in 'The Bells of Saint John' ****(As if the Ponds departure wasn't bad enough-Moffat!) ****belongs to Dr Who BBC.**

**This thing that goes on**

"_Everyone else has stopped reading. Apart from _you_**. **__It is just you, isn't it? I knew it would be. I knew that one day you would find an old, jam-stained copy of this in a second-hand bookshop, brown pages smelling of caramel. I knew you'd pick it up and smile that little smile (the one that does Fond while your eyes are doing Three Moves Ahead). You'd check the last page and then you'd just wonder if there was anything else meant here for you, you lovely, silly Raggedy Man. Well, there is."_

Extract from an introduction to Summer Falls By Amelia Williams (1st Edition, 1954) -Dr. Who BBC.

They were living well. All things considered.

They find a house, a neat little detached on the outskirts. This was after Rory finds a job at the hospital (as a doctor, because men _just weren't_ nurses), and after she starts writing. Before this, it was a grim little apartment on Seventh Avenue, up three flights of stairs (the lift was broken. Even if it wasn't they're not sure they could have brought themselves to use it anyway), that was forty minutes from the hospital, and smelled of damp.

That first while, they didn't have anything, so Rory had to walk and she cleaned the apartment block so the landlord would let them stay (climbing up and down all six flights every day.) The name of the road does not escape her notice. But there were no little girl hopes to rely on, only her and Rory-_together_- relying on themselves to try, keep trying-we'll get there, it will be better-

_It's called marriage._

Waiting.

It does get better. Rory struggles with being an intern again, adjusting to this time they have to make theirs. But he slowly moves upwards, caring, blundering, wonderful Rory, and they earn and save and live off air and each other. She finds a column at magazine about domestic life to write once a week, and they get a bit more.

Then they find the house. It has a garden and windows in the kitchen that get the sun. Best of all, the elderly owner left her car with the deal. Rory drives now, puts in a few more hours while she digs through every thrift store (_thrift_-one other thing to get used to, so many more to adapt) and secondhand shops; curtains, rugs, lamps and small bits of furniture. She is hanging the latest drapes up when Rory comes in one Tuesday evening. They have been here for a year now.

"I've been promoted" and they smile proper smiles for the first time in awhile.

The pieces of furniture get bigger and she does feel better.

Rory has kept climbing, never stopped caring. Sixty years later, there is a tribute in the newspaper to the city's most esteemed doctor; 'Ahead of his time.' Oh, the irony. If they had known, they would have put a message in it somehow, for him.

She enjoys writing now, putting together advice and travel articles and maybe a novel for kids (but more like memories on paper). They have also discovered gardening- "I can keep plants alive, thank you, Rory." (She punishes him with a grin and a sharp aim from the hosepipe). One day, she gets a brown envelope with a manuscript inside. So she has to think about the things she cherishes, and will never forget, but wishes they didn't hurt so much. Rory does not want to write. "This is for you and him."

This is their life now. The enormity of what this meant; _All I have to do_- the blink allowing an Angel's touch.

She loves Rory. _The most beautiful man I've ever met, _but she loved him, too. _Off to see the Universe. _She knows how important they both are, two focal points of her life. It was a long time before she got over that day. The wrenching horror of it. _I'll be with him_-And the nightmares; _but it's my best shot, yeah?_ and the guilt _–just come back-_

Grief and horror_-Pond, please-_old stones and tweed and then-

Dark street. Cold-_RORY! _She doesn't think she's ever been so terrified in her life. Terror wasn't even the word. If she was here, in this now, and he was not-_I don't know, nobody knows!-_

-But he is. _Rory_.

So They are Here, and He is There. Everywhere and everywhen. Every time except this one. Their time, now. River won't stay. She'll travel with him, -_you look after him- _but she won't stay. _Never let him see the damage._ River loves him, but she knows this (Mother's intuition).

_Rory. _

This is why she did it. She knows he would not want her to feel guilty, that he did understand. She knows that this won't have made him hurt any less._-You're my friend. My best friend. _Twenty years later and she will still wake up at nights, the ring of his voice, ancient eyes and that _stupid bloody_ bow tie stinging her eyes with tears and a lump in her throat so hard and painful she can't speak.

_-I remember. I can bring you back, too!_

Except she can't.

_II. We're all stories in the end_

Sometimes in the city she longs to hear an English voice, thinks of Scotland, left so long ago. They miss telly in the evenings of the long winter. They gripe good-naturedly about the way people say Fall instead of Autumn. It feels strange when she has to remember to write her surname beginning with a W instead of a P. (Because _that's_ _how it is_, in this time.) She's not sorry, doesn't dislike it, but it's strange. _That's a brilliant name-like a name in a fairytale-_

Most of all, she wishes for fish fingers and custard. She gains a new insight into his wild exuberance, terrible fashion sense. Goofy grin. That look in his eyes sometimes that made her realize she is _so_ _tiny_ against all his lives of travel and running._Because you are all I ever remember. _Joyous to dangerous in less than two seconds flat-He is alone. Moving through Time, Madman in a box.

_The most important thing you should know about me_.

A soft day in July of the year they arrived, Rory is out in the little veg patch putting in canes to train the sweet peas. She rushes out the backdoor, then tries to gather herself.

"I wish it hadn't come yet" she says, everything rushed, chaos emotion.

He leans back on his heels, puzzled then concerned.

"The book. Melody's-River's book." She goes and sits on the bench. Rory brushes off his hands to follow.

"All that time we were with him. It was_ so_… we couldn't choose between this or that…He was so happy to see us, then he stayed that time, for…_days_ and-" She doesn't think she can explain with words. She gestures, encompassing the garden, the house. And everything else. She knows Rory sees that. "_He_ felt-feels- like…_this_ all the time. The other day, that time when Robert asked about the cars you like, and you couldn't say-If I had known that this is what he feels all the time, I would have put…_more_ in the Afterword, so he knows that we _know_. What it's like to be…outside of a place. But, Rory, I have you. And he doesn't even have a planet anymore, or people."

It has taken this, her own experience out of time of just more than a year, to understand why he is who he is. And he is over a thousand years old and she guessed, but never really saw how much he suffered.

_The only girl in the universe to whom the Doctor tells everything?_

So she lets go.

If he hid it from her, he can keep going, has been going. Another thousand years. She stops wishing, waiting.

Here. Now.

_III. Summer Fell_

Rory comes home one day, puzzled when she is not there. (They will still find themselves digging in a pocket or bag for a mobile phone, nearly twenty years later). So he changes out of scrubs and starts dinner. That is _not how it's done, _in this here and now, but he doesn't care.

"Rory!" his wife bowls in, all bluster of autumn (fall) wind and excitement, cheeks flushed, hair wild. Her sudden arrival-electricity presence-is so reminiscent of the way someone else he knows (knew) would enter a room that for a moment he is frozen. Memories of another life? He must be getting old. He pushes away from his desk, rising to greet her. But she slaps down a sheaf of papers burrowed from her handbag. He tilts them round the right way up, pushing his glasses up his nose-

Adoption papers.

She comes in one day from getting groceries to find Rory at the desk with a mug of tea and the rat-a-tat-tat of her typewriter (she still misses Biros). When he finishes the letter to Brian, neither of them say what they know the other is thinking; Half wondering if maybe he has already been, but she knows he won't have. They would like, secretly, to put something in for him, but they have no idea when or where he is.

_There's one thing you should know, because your life may depend on it-_

She sees sunflowers at the market one mild afternoon on a Sunday, and buys them all. She and Rory stand and admire their vibrancy in the window. He knows about that trip, of course.

They are happy now. _Together, like it should be._ As happy as can be, wrenched from him, so sudden, so cruel.

But; _Amy's choice_.

She knows that there were others before her. She hopes he has someone now.

_We will love you, always._

She does, after all.

_Don't be alone, Doctor._

_FIN._

**So, my first ****fic! The _Angels _episode was so sad, I thought the Ponds were brilliant characters. I liked the Afterword Amy wrote though. The idea of adoption papers in this came from the unaired short 'P.S', set post-Ponds that you can find on YouTube.**


	2. Chapter 2

**So, yeah the one-shot has suddenly become a two-shot. Been in the works for a while, just finally decided to finish it. Poor old Doctor, he deserves his side of it.**

_I. When I couldn't live without you.  
><em>

Oh, he should know by now.

He does know. He knew it would not end well, deep down in that bitter, dark place of himself, he knew the Universe would not let him away unscathed. He knows-

They never, ever last.

He cursed himself even as hope bloomed, as they agreed to come, as he failed to deny them. _it's you they can't give up, Doctor._

No. It was him who wasn't letting go. True, but then there is the other part of him so touched to know that it's true for them too. That they love him back. Perhaps that was why he foolishly thought he would be allowed it. They weren't going to leave to go and live in a house, or to go and find their significant other. They both wanted it.

And he cheated himself, let himself down-_I…miss you…-_sat still for days, and was frightened to find he had no desire to Move On.

_I can't live like this, don't make me_; He couldn't afford to love this much.

-_You wither and you die-_

He even thought, be wiser, just this once-and so made himself acknowledge it, sat there with her shoulder to shoulder.

_You're thinking of stopping, aren't you?_

So she would know, too. It's okay, I understand. (At least he was trying to). But she knows him so well, oh darling Pond-_Why do you keep coming back for us?_ Maybe because she was the first face he saw, yes, but maybe because of River. Maybe because she is just so irrevocably, gloriously_ Pond_.

_Bring them back safe._

But the Doctor also knows he never keeps promises.

It's not like he hasn't tried before. _Forget your faith in me-_

He didn't like to do it_ (wanted to be adored-_there is a grain of truth in that he doesn't want to acknowledge) and because oh, she is still so dear and innocent, believing everything can always be fixed (weather by him or not), and he hates to take that from her. _Amelia Williams-_

So he went further still-_After everything we've been through?-_

And then the TARDIS is so devoid without them.

_What's the alternative-_

-Oh, if only he'd known.

_II. or visa versa_

-He let it go on for far too long.

He had made himself blind to what he knew would happen. How many have said forever, how many had he almost, _almost_ kept safe?

_I was gonna be with you, forever-_

_They keep on try to split us up, but they never, ever will-_

-Maybe it's because of River.

Well, yes, they were a connection to her, but she is Pond anyway, in the end and he lost her too, before he even knew her. He refused to let it happen to them, too

-_not them, Brian, never them._

In Berlin, he remembers seeing her standing there in her new everything, marveling at her as she marveled at herself,stunned by it; Ponds' _daughter_?

-is this how it is happening now, for us?

_To me-who are you to me?_

He doesn't really see much of her and him, because of course he can't see his own Timeline. But he knows how she ends, before she even knows her self _(who's River Song?)_. And he knowshow they will end-_All this time you knew- _

So it hardly matters anyway.

-he looks away from the Course of the woman who knows His Name, and instead sees how pitiful her connection was to the Timelines of her parents.

(His fault, of course).

And then, stupid Doctor, he looked further along, and was optimistic. Thought guiltily, perhaps he could absolve a little, because the Timelines of those three Ponds-mother, father, daughter-they all suddenly tied in more tightly, at one later point in their lives.

And now, oh _now_, he knows why that is.

New York. 1940's Manhattan.

They had to have someone to help them, stranded in Time. It should be their daughter.

In his same stubborn blindness, he refused to think that anything could happen now. After all, they had _done_ it. A thing happened, _You will be running for the rest of your life-_

but they were all still intact, all together _The paradox worked, we're back where we started-_and he was so stupidly ecstatic, because _he knows_ by now, but in his relief he realizes he can't let them go. He hasn't loved anyone like he has them. Except River, but she _is_ a Pond-

But then-then suddenly, horribly-there was only one significant other. _Hey Amy, come see this- _and he was hating himself, shocked and hurt-_Rory the Roman-_ as he had to break Amelia's heart all over again. _it would rip New York apart-_

Rory the Nurse. _A little job to do-_

Rory who followed her Anywhere, _No, I'm not Mr. Pond_-Rory who saw the small things, -_It's important to me-_Rory who looked at him and told him what he saw-_you know what's dangerous?-_

Rory who didn't need It like he and Amelia did-the unlimited vastness of that life was not enough for him. _Real life. _The Doctor had always admired that.

He was everything the Doctor admired and loved in them-the reason he took the ones like him, because they were all right when they said he needed someone, because he is lonely. And he is definitely one of the nice ones, but they are _needed_ because sometimes he has to be stopped. And oh, he should have stopped, left Amy waiting, left his Wife in that cell, left Rory there to love them both-but he didn't.

And now the universe was making him pay for it.

-Then she steps forward and that awful, awful bitter dark fear that is so familiar rises.

Wait-_What are you doing?_

No. But then she reaches out to her daughter _stop it, just-just stop it!-_ he realizes that means she is really going to do it and it's a physical hurt as he sees them both, his River-Melody who is gone, will be going-and his Pond who is leaving, right there, but he can't stop her-_I'll be with him-_

And then he sees what the Decision she makes through her tears is doing-_Look at you now, all grown up-_

No. Not this, anyone but her, anything but that; because he sees what this choice was creating, watches it Become with horror.

_You are creating Fixed Time!_

-Those strands of timelines. Every happening-past, present, future, every could-have-been, everything that made her Amelia were twisting and rearranging around this, twisting into his hearts as they were a physical thing-solidifying into what he could not touch, into _what Must Be. _Not this, why this? Oh, Time, the one thing he could never save them from, any of them-

_Come back-Just come back-_

He knows that she has to do it, because she should, and she always gets what she ants and they both deserve each other-oh, but she can't; _we'll figure something out_-she doesn't know, she can't see what this is doing, don't-

_I will never be able to see you again_!

Please. Not this.

_Raggedy man-_

_III. It goes so fast.  
><em>

He still has River. _The first time we met her at the Library_- For now.

He has never loved her more than then, standing there at his console. And she knows him too well, of course she does, of course they did. He knows that's why he couldn't let go, now-again, he should have known-they were a family, and he knows what happens to those. The little girl who didn't want to grow up, and the brave, wonderful foolish boy she loved and who loved her in return, and their little girl, who was never really theirs, properly, but she was in some way, which counts for something

He realizes, abruptly, strangely, where River got it from.

_And do one more thing for me-_

_-Come as soon as you can. x._

-Anytime they asked him, he would be there.

_Go to her. Tell her a story._

_-The usual. For coming when I call._

They were Ponds, after all.

_You will seal onto my hearts._

**So, yes that also turned into a bit of a River/Doctor thing, but it works, because she is technically a Pond, and the circumstances of her farewell with the Doctor are nearly worse, I think, because he knows what's going to happen. Maybe why he was so reluctant to let go them. Anyway, musing over, please review if you feel so inclined!**

**(Also, yes I know this is the first thing I've put up in ages, so for those of you waiting for more **_**Infinite Horizons,**_** it's not too far away. I mean it this time, doing my bestest!).**

**Happy Christmas! **

**Grá,**

**TheSoul**.


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